


Running Silent

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel holds a double vigil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running Silent

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Coda for 5x14. Hints of unrequited Dean/Castiel. References one piece of fanon from my prior stories canon has yet to contradict. Thank you to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/smilla02/profile)[**smilla02**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/smilla02/) for the kickass beta.

Dean's steps, heavy on the stairs, grow fainter. The door opens, letting a spill of more light into the cellar before it closes again with a softness that makes Castiel jerk away from the wall in a way he wouldn't have if Dean slammed the door. The air is cold, and Castiel shouldn't be noticing that. He's tired in ways he shouldn't be, aches in his muscles. It's easier that Dean's left, because of what's radiating from him.

Once Castiel had his wits about him again after the confrontation with Famine, his failure there a bitter taste in the back of his throat, he looked into Dean. This is something he has no business doing, something he has grown to understand is invasive, but he does it anyway. The last time he saw Dean's soul, it was bright and angry.

Dean's keeping his own lights turned down now, doesn't know he's doing it to himself, and doesn't appear to know how to reverse it. Castiel's heard Bobby and the television use a term that sounds right, _running silent_. It kept Dean from Famine's influence. It's a defense, and it's devouring Dean from the inside out.

Panic, fear, for someone else, is still new to Castiel.

He's tempted to try to fix it. He's meddled with Dean's soul once before. But if a quick peek is a slight transgression, this would be a full-out invasion, and things are not as they once were. If there's no other way, he's not sure he'll refrain from doing it -- with an action as violent as kicking a door open, bringing fire.

Dean is free of his contract; his soul is his own.

The air smells of metal and mortar and mold. Old brick is rough under his fingers, showing through chipped cement, as he leans against the wall. It's a relief to have Jimmy subsided once again. Perhaps it's Jimmy that's causing the twist in his gut as Sam screams through the door.

Sam asked to go into the "panic room," as the Winchesters called it, but now he's pleading to be let out, voice echoing yet muffled. He says Dean's name, and Castiel's, and that's the part that makes his fingers clench against the brick, that Sam should be calling out to him, here of all places. He helped make Sam what he is right now, unknowingly at first or not, but it was a knowing turn of his wrist and fingers that released him the last time.

When Castiel's senses reach towards Sam, it brings back a taste of when he pulled Dean, struggling against him, out of Hell. It's a thin layer over what feels entirely like Sam, whose determination, his need to do _right_ , is as strong as his terror and his self-loathing.

The pleas subside into sobs. Castiel can't resist, he brushes Sam's mind, and the sobs quiet for a few minutes before Sam starts shouting again, incoherent. Castiel could open the door, put his fingers to Sam's forehead, ease him through this, and it surprises him how much he wants to do it, how much it hurts not to.

That door isn't opening, not unless Sam becomes a danger to himself. Not until Sam is fully himself again.

* * *

When Dean prays, it reaches Castiel not in words, but something that vibrates as a low hum under his skin. Dean's desperation and need makes it so he can hardly stand still. He's at the base of the stairs before he hears a muffled thud and a small groan from behind the door, so he stops and turns back. If anything happened to Sam, the last of Dean would flicker out. Dean didn't leave the cellar because he wanted to, Castiel knows he finds it unbearable to listen to his brother's torment. He stays so Dean doesn't have to, so he can go pray. Surely Castiel's Father is listening to him.

Surely Dean will understand why Castiel doesn't go to him.

Castiel's fingers work into the folds of his shirt between the buttons to find the amulet. He pinches it between his thumb and forefinger hard enough that it could draw blood if he were merely human. This must be what human hope feels like, sharp and sweet and metallic. More astonishing is the sudden rush of anger towards his Father that follows. He is deeply ashamed of it, and puts it away.

The words run through his head anyway, answering Dean, _I'm right here, we're right here_ and hopes Dean understands that as well.

Perhaps this is Jimmy still too near the surface after Famine stirred his hunger.

The itch of Dean's prayer fades, along with the ache of it. Castiel puts his back against the metal door and finds he has an overwhelming impulse to sit down. He does, with his knees bent and his coat spreading out on either side of him on the dirty floor.

Light spills down again when the door opens and a voice calls to him, but it's not Dean, it's the Winchesters' friend, Bobby Singer. He's a man of good faith, even if it may not be directed at Castiel's Father. Like Joanna Beth and her mother Ellen, he's a reason Castiel's grateful he made the choices he did, that Dean made him see. They weren't of his own kind, yet he feels the loss of them the way he does his brothers and sisters, even the ones who died at his own hands, and it's nothing he knows what to do with. He wonders when this particular concept of _loss_ became comprehensible and important to him.

It's too much, he can't keep them all safe.

"Hey, Clarence, everything okay down there?"

"Yes," Castiel answers, the tiredness deepening. He wonders who this "Clarence" is that enemies and friends alike should keep calling him by that name. He doesn't need sleep, but he finds himself longing for it.

Bobby doesn't seem inclined to leave yet. "Sam need anything?"

"To my knowledge Sam has all that he needs at this moment."

"Okay, then. Dean down there?"

The concern surrounds Bobby. He wears it the way Castiel wears Jimmy Novak. It's a part of him. "No," Castiel answers. "He...went out for air."

There's a silence as if Bobby would like to air his opinions on that. But then all he says is, "You need anything?" He sounds dubious of the value of asking this.

"No, thank you, Bobby Singer."

The door at the top of the stairs closes.

He waits, and through small, high cellar windows, the darkness changes.

* * *

As Dean comes down the stairs, Castiel gets to his feet, tugging his coat back into order. Dean's expression is worn as sand-blasted rocks, too calm. The bottle of whiskey is gone. He goes right to the door and flips open the viewing hole.

"He's asleep," Dean says.

"Yes. He has been for some time."

"You looked in on him?" That's the first time Dean looks at Castiel.

"Through the viewing window, yes. Several times."

Dean scrubs a knuckle across his chin, his other palm flat against the raised letters on the door that say _Premiere_. Why a door like that should have that word on it, Castiel has no idea. A premiere is a beginning, while the panic room is a prison or a stronghold according to need.

"Uh, thanks," Dean says. "You...it's okay, I've got it now."

Frowning, Castiel looks at him, finds Dean staring back.

"I mean, it's all right if you have to leave. To go do...wherever it is you go when you're not hanging around with Team We're So Screwed."

Castiel doesn't know if Dean is asking him to leave or checking to see if he wants to remain.

"I have nowhere else to be just now," Castiel says.

* * *

Dean sits on the cellar steps, head down on his folded arms, his face hidden. His fist curls on his knee. Castiel can't stop staring at the bruises on his knuckles where he punched Cupid, the cuts and scratches. The back of Dean's neck is exposed, young, empty of the cord Castiel now wears around his own neck. Standing at the wall, Castiel wants to go to him, slide his fingers over the fist, unclench it, heal the bruising. Dean's short-cropped hair is dark in this light. His shoulders move slightly, slow and even as he dozes. This is not how angels think, this kind of interest.

Castiel lets Dean rest.

* * *

Through the metal door, Sam's voice, roughened but calm, calls, "Hey, guys."

Holding a mug of liquid long since gone cold, Dean hurries over to the door. "Sammy?" He sets the mug down on a wooden chair that leans too far to the left.

"Yeah. You think...you think I can come out now?"

Sam sounds and feels against Castiel's mind as he should and Castiel nods a split second before Dean's unlocking the door. Castiel somehow doesn't think Dean needed, or would wait, for that permission either way.

"Uh, hi," Sam says, looking bleary-eyed as he steps out of the room. They hadn't needed to restrain him, but he has been in there for days with water and a little food that Castiel notes he barely touched. Sam rubs a hand over his face and through his hair, blinking. A narrow beam of bright afternoon sun slants across Sam, a sword of light that reveals how pale he looks, the shadows under his eyes.

"You all right?" Dean reaches out, clasps a hand into the curve where Sam's neck meets his shoulder, fingers digging in a little as he studies his brother's face.

"I think so." Sam glances at Castiel. "Cas," he says softly.

It's a thank you, Castiel gets that. "It's good to see you again, Sam."

"You too," says Sam.

Then Dean mentions food, while Castiel steps away from them, reaching for a fold of space. Much as he wants to stay, he has to keep looking for his Father.

As he snaps his wings, the cellar, the Winchesters, and the open metal door spinning away, he sees Dean flicker, and grow brighter.

~end


End file.
